HOT PHONONS IN QUANTUM WIRES - A MONTE-CARLO INVESTIGATION

We have investigated the effect of non-equilibrium phonons on carrier relaxation dynamics in a quantum wire following ultrafast photoexcitation. We show that phonon build-up produces a considerable reduction of the cooling rate of photoexcited carriers for densities of the order of 10(6) cm(-1). In this respect, the results for quantum wires are found to be similar to the bulk case. An important consequence of the reduced dimensionality of wires is found in the non-equilibrium phonon distribution, which is populated even at very small wave vectors.